We also follow the adventures of Elliel, a disgraced Brava whose memories have been erased by a rune of forgetting, and who rescues a mysterious wreth. Priestlords create godlings, and can use them as weapons, once they've been fed a bloody sacrifice. On his own initiative, he leads a raid against Osterra, eastern kingdom of the Commonwealth. Ishara is ruled by Empra Iluris, who has trouble with Priestlord Klovus. Meanwhile, frostwreths destroy a village in Norterra where Koll's beloved daughter and grandsons had been. She demands that Adan's people join her in war with her enemies, the frostwreths. As the story opens, a devastating sandstorm precedes the arrival at Adan's castle gates of a hundred sandwreths, led by Queen Voo. Penda has a pet ska, Xar, scaled and the size of a falcon. Adan's lovely wife Penda comes from the nomadic Utauk trader clans. Young Adan Starfall is king of Suderra, one of the Three Kingdoms (Adan's father Conn is high king and his uncle Koll is king of Norterra). Millennia later, humans have built their own warring empires. The wreth factions were believed to have exterminated each other. Terrible wars followed between two factions of wreth and the human slaves they created to do their bidding. It's said that the god Kur first created the wreth race, powerful in magic, and disappeared after commanding them to kill the dragon Ossus. Anderson's Spine of the Dragon opens a new fantasy series, Wake the Dragon, set in a world where the Commonwealth of Three Kingdoms and Ishara have long been at war. Agent: John Silbersack, Bent Agency.Spine of the Dragon: Wake the Dragon #1 by Kevin J. Anderson Grimdark fantasy fans will find this an enticing series start. This epic fantasy takes readers on a sometimes brutal, often enthralling journey through marvelously detailed lands with intriguing characters, and Anderson does an impressive job of juggling numerous points of view and levels of story. Scenes of rape and incest and mentions of pedophilia may be difficult for some readers. But when the leaders of the Commonwealth ask for peace with Ishara to fight the wreths together, they find that opposition from their own people may be the greatest danger. When a fiery explosion destroys a mountain range, it becomes evident that the legends of a dragon are also true. The wreths had become no more than old stories then the queen of the sandwreths appears after a sandstorm and asks to become allies with a human king, while another king finds everyone in his daughter’s village killed by frostwreths.

The wreths, the long-vanished creators of the human race, return to wake a dangerous dragon and destroy the world that humans have built. series) smoothly tells a harrowing story of powerful magic and gritty battles on a world where the two continent-spanning empires, the Commonwealth and Ishara, are at war.

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